Every Dinosaur In 'Jurassic Park' Series Explained | WIRED

I'm Nathan Smith I'm an associate curator in the dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County I'm here to talk to you about every dinosaur that you can find in the Jurassic Park films welcome to Jurassic Park brachiosaur was a member of the sauropod group so these are the huge long necked plant eaters Rekha Soros was one of the animals with longer four limbs and a vertically held neck that are probably used for hi browsing so in the first Jurassic Park movie you see it up there in the tops of the trees sneezing on the kids [Music] Parasaurolophus is one of the crested duck-billed dinosaurs they have kind of a long gait crest on their head some of these might have been used for vocalization or also display characteristics for kind of recognizing their own species or for a sexual display they also had a really amazing battery of teeth that helped them grind up plant material Velociraptor is probably the most famous dinosaur from Jurassic Park in real life Velociraptor was a much smaller animal probably about the size of a really big turkey one of the most interesting things about it is that we know this animal and the group it belongs to were very close relatives of birds and we actually have evidence now that came out since the first film that Velociraptor probably was at least partially covered in feathers there are actually bony quill knobs that are present on its forearm Velociraptor was kind of a fleet-footed fast animal possibly more intelligent than some other dinosaurs I'm not sure if they were really as hyper intelligent as they're portrayed in the film but there's got to be a little artistic license with that [Music] Triceratops is another iconic dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation you know three very large horns and the frill on the back this is an animal that lived alongside Tyrannosaurus and is often depicted with Tyrannosaurus and it plays a big role in the early Jurassic Park films as well it's actually an animal that gets sick because of the plant life that's been reproduced alongside the dinosaurs in the first film Tyrannosaurus Rex one of the most popular dinosaurs of all time or the the greats of the Jurassic Park film franchise t-rex is always kind of portrayed as the top dinosaur because for the longest time it was the largest predatory dinosaur that we knew of um recent discoveries kind of only in the past 15 or 20 years have shown that there are several other species of large carnivorous dinosaur that are now vying for that title so it's possible that Tyrannosaurus has been dethroned as the largest carnivore so there's a big point made in the first film that t-rex had relatively poor vision and there is some evidence that it's other senses might have been a little more well-developed its sense of smell for instance but I find it a little unlikely that t-rex would have been unable to see some of the humans standing right in front of it so in the second Jurassic Park film t-rex actually gets loose I think in San Diego and is running around downtown and then the suburbs again I think this is an animal that probably would have been more confused than anything else and probably would have been not quite on a rampage but just trying to get out of there and away from everybody [Music] the local source also plays an iconic role in Jurassic Park this is the animal that takes out Nedry in one of the Jurassic Park Jeeps during the rainstorm now there is a little bit of artistic license used for the portrayal of Dilophosaurus because it probably did not have that large frill and there's also no evidence that it actually spats poison however in reality some of the specimens we have of Dilophosaurus were much larger than the animal that's portrayed in Jurassic Park so this is a rare instance where the real thing might have been even bigger and scarier it probably would have likely attacked without first alerting someone like nedra to its presence without using a frill and without using poison just the old-fashioned coming right at them with the teeth Gallimimus is an animal that is known from one of the most famous scenes of Jurassic Park where they're actually hurting through an open field and coming right after the protagonist Alan Grant and the kids we learn shortly after that they're actually fleeing from a very hungry t-rex these are probably correctly portrayed as being some of the speediest animals that were around during the Late Cretaceous Pro Compsognathus is another animal that plays a big role in Jurassic Park but it's a little better described in the actual book series so this is an animal that's a very small carnivorous or predatory dinosaur that is because of its size maybe a little unassuming but actually plays a major role both in the beginning of the movie and at the end and some of the folks that it takes out we don't actually have direct evidence of kind of social behavior or this kind of gregariousness for pro Compsognathus but we do have some evidence mass death assemblages of the same species of dinosaur that suggested these animals might have hung out kind of in large groups [Music] stegasaurus another iconic dinosaur one of people's favorites this is kind of a armor-plated dinosaur with a big series of spikes on the back of its tail that tail probably was very much a defensive weapon for a Stegosaurus and and certainly and it probably would have used it to protect itself or to protect its offspring one interesting fact about Stegosaurus is that we still don't really have a good handle on what those plates were used for Pachycephalosaurus another iconic dinosaur from Jurassic Park and this is a member of the group the Pachycephalosaurus that have the big domed heads that often get portrayed in popular media as being used for head-butting each other or in Jurassic Park for head barding those Rangers that are trying to corral it or even ramming into the side of a jeep door Cerreta soros is an animal that's not quite as well known it actually gets its name from a horn that it has right on the tip of the snout so it is a carnivorous dinosaur a member of the theropod group one interesting thing about Ceratosaurus is that it represents an evolutionary lineage that's gonna kind of branch off and be a little bit separate from most of the other carnivorous dinosaurs that we see in the Jurassic Park films [Music] corythosaurus this animal is a duck-billed dinosaur a member of the Lambie soar group a plant-eater it's doesn't have the really elongate press of animals like augustin alofa soar Parasaurolophus but it does have this kind of high domed crest that actually looks superficially kind of like what you might see on a head of a cassowary today and Kyla Soros is another very famous dinosaur so these are the heavily armored dinosaurs or quadrupedal very short and stout and Kyla Soros is very well known for having this really robust and big tail club situated the end of the tail that it probably did use as a defensive weapon although it's interesting to note that not all in Kyla sores possess that tail club Spinosaurus this is an animal that plays a big role in the third Jurassic Park film as kind of the main villain of that film and it's recognized by a huge sale that comes across the back now that this is a group of animals that we didn't really know much about until recently with kind of a flurry of new discoveries although some of the first ones were discovered almost a hundred years ago so Spinosaurus and the larger group the spinosaur day that it belongs to our animals that were actually semi-aquatic it's probably spending some time in the water it's probably living and doing a lot of it's feeding near the water and including from some of the large fish that were around during this time and the Cretaceous whether or not it was using that sale to help propel itself through the water it's maybe a little more doubtful and a little bit of artistic license it's definitely the case that these animals were more adapted to life in the water than we had previously given them credit for so Spinosaurus is also famous from the third Jurassic Park film for doing battle with Tyrannosaurus one of the largest dinosaurs of all time and recent studies of new specimens of Spinosaurus have also suggested that this animal probably rivaled Tyrannosaurus in science [Music] pteranodon shows up in a lot of the Jurassic Park films it's probably one of the most well known pterosaurs in the films so this is an animal that's actually not a dinosaur it's a flying reptile a member of the group Terra Soria that are closely related to dinosaurs but not dinosaurs themselves so in Jurassic world there's also a very famous scene where there's kind of a Pteranodon attack on the main part of the park where everybody's running around and fleeing sometimes drinking Han and we see Pteranodons swoop in and actually grab people and pick them up with their their hind feet which definitely would have been impossible these animals wouldn't have been able to hold that much weight and they also probably aren't using their feet for grasping and attacking prey the way kind of an eagle or a hawk would these animals are probably attacking and taking prey more similar to like a modern stork Mosasaurus and Moses or iya are not actually dinosaurs these are animals that are actually closely related to lizards so the movie kind of portrays Mosasaurus as hunting its prey near the water's edge and there there might be some evidence for that because many of them are found in the shallow marine settings but it's also quite likely that they were hunting other animals actively in the water including large a monoids that lived in this Western interior Seaway Baryonyx is an animal that shows up in one of the new Jurassic Park films people will immediately recognize it looks a lot like Spinosaurus but just lacking that giant sail and that is because it's a member of that same group of dinosaurs who spinosaur a day [Music] Carnotaurus is another animal that shows up in the new Jurassic Park film this animal gets its name for the kind of low oldest horns that are sticking out just above the eyes and if you're not looking too quick this animal might look like just another large predatory dinosaur similar to t-rex you might even be thrown off by the fact that this animal it has very stubby forelegs but this is actually a member of the group called the abuse ORS which are common during the Late Cretaceous on the southern continents so they kind of in many ways might have played a role similar to t-rex but on the southern continents during that time Allosaurus is another well-known dinosaur so this animal would have been a large bodied predatory dinosaur kind of near the top of the food chain during the Late Jurassic would have been a contemporary of animals like Stegosaurus Apatosaurus Brachiosaurus Apatosaurus is another large plant-eating sauropods source a really long neck although compared to Brachiosaurus this animal would have held its neck more horizontally it's possible that the difference in necks between animals like Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus probably reflects feeding differences these animals were probably browsing it at different heights in the trees that were around during the Late Jurassic with Brachiosaurus kind of able to reach a lot more of the high vegetation so one of the most interesting facts about Apatosaurus has to do with another dinosaur brontosaurus brontosaurus an Apatosaurus looked very very similar and brontosaurus might actually just be the adult version of Apatosaurus since the PATA source had been named first it had priority the animals were kind of sunk into each other as one species some new studies have suggested that the specimens that make up the material of brontosaurus may be distinct enough to warrant them being its own genus so in the past couple of years brontosaurus has been brought back whether it stays that way who's to say there are scenes in Jurassic Park where BT Wong or dr. Henry talks about how they've modified the genes of some of these dinosaurs and that some of the traits that they've selected for have had unintended consequences which play out throughout the film so indominus rex in the new Jurassic world movie allows the folks at the park to kind of play around a little more and actually combine together several different dinosaurs to make something even bigger and even scarier I think it makes for a great villain in the movies and it allows the film to go in a little bit more of a horror movie direction we're kind of a Frankenstein's monster type style which allows for a lot more suspenseful moments and kind of new themes and topics in the film so there's one scene in the film where indominus kind of starts to communicate with the velociraptors and we learned that indominus rex actually has some Velociraptor DNA that might be more of a stretch than some of the other aspects of the film but at this point we've kind of already bought into the world they've created Indo Raptor is the new villainous dinosaur in the Jurassic world's franchise on Kingdom and what they seem to do is have taken indominus rex and combined it with more Raptor DNA so I almost kind of envision Christopher Walken somewhere shaking a cowbell and shouting I need more Raptor I need more Raptor in this dinosaur so they kind of crank up the Raptor a little bit and create an animal that supposedly is even more dangerous even more deadly for the new film so I think Jurassic Park and Jurassic world sometimes take a lot of flak from scientists for inaccuracies like any films do when they're trying to portray Natural History but in reality they've actually done a really great job of trying to focus on getting the anatomy of the animals right getting inferences about their behavior their vocalizations other things correct now certainly they take artistic license like any films do but more so than a lot of the films that have featured dinosaurs in the past Jurassic Park and that franchise have have really tried to involve the scientists and get accurate depictions of what these animals might have looked like and I think that just adds to how fascinating the films actually are welcome to Jurassic world

Channel: WIRED

Views: 2,519,078

Rating: 4.913558 out of 5

Keywords: jurassic, jurassic park, jurassic world, jurassic park movies, every dinosaur, jurassic world movies, jurassic park t rex, jurassic park dinosaurs, trex, tyrannosaurus rex, dinos, dino, natural history museum, the dinosaur institute, nathan smith, nathan smith dinosaurs, dinosaur expert, expert, curator, dinosaur curator, jurassic park tyrannosaurus rex, spinosaurus, jurassic park 3, the lost world, dinosaur, dinosaurs, fallen kingdom, wired

Id: hcUAJNqxrUY

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Radergh]

One of the reasons I thought to get into filmmaking was to make more scientifically correct depictions of natural things in films...unfortunately from what I have seen not many creatives care for being correct and the people in it for the money don't care much either.

[u/Shadowcat270]

It's nice to see an expert on dinosaurs who doesn't hate the films for not being 100% accurate, and enjoys them for what they are, and how they still do have some realism in them.

[u/kbock]

calling it fluff is extremely disrespectful

[u/mjmannella]

This was a really well done video! However, did did miss some species:

• Mamenchisaurus (The Lost World)
• Dimorphodon (Jurassic World)
• Sinoceratops (Fallen Kingdom)
• Stygimoloch (Fallen Kingdom)

He also identified the Compsognathus are Procompsognathus for some reason (the latter is in the novel, but the films use Compsognathus).